Sitting on One Butt Cheek for Diabetes

I’m officially burnt out, not from my 4.5 decades of diabetes but from the relentlessly pathetic public awareness campaigns. I give up*, you just have to laugh otherwise you’d cry or lapse into depression. The dust has just settled on National Diabetes Week in Australia and each year just seems to get worse.

Who could possibly think that DNSW’s Standing on One Leg event was a responsible, constructive way of doing ANYTHING for diabetes let alone being an appropriate way of tackling preventable amputations? Seriously, do they put some PR interns with no knowledge of healthy psychology, fear appeals or diabetes in a room and tell them to come up with an idea in 10 minutes and then run with the most ridiculous one? Certainly seems so.

Anyone who can come up with a more inappropriate, pathetic campaign slogan/event/or other awareness campaign idea will win a $A10 Amazon voucher that they can spend on something great like a book that tells them how to manage their type 1 with a healthy diet (authored by the IDF who told us just that last year). The idea doesn’t have to be diabetes related although bonus points if it is. I certainly don’t underestimate the enormity of this task. The stupidity and inappropriateness of this idea takes some beating.**

The incompetency of diabetes campaigns gave me an idea. I’m thinking about a slogan like “Don’t be half-arsed about diabetes”, perhaps the evening of a full moon might be an appropriate time for an awareness event-anyone got some graphics for the promotional material they’d like to offer. (Yes this idea did occur to me after 5 minutes of thinking-but you get the idea, don’t be shy.)

*For the record I have complained constructively and offered constructive feedback (had nice letters AND action from the Australian government and at least corrective action from the IDF). But things just keep getting worse instead of better. Another year another crap campaign that does more harm than good.

**The prize will be awarded at the sole discretion of me, it is a game of skill -or rather complete lack of talent and ability to be insensitive.

Good luck finding a suitable graphic. I’ll leave that to someone else as the ideas I came up with were a bit R-rated. Totally agree with you about the Standing on One Leg campaign. I don’t know what it was supposed to achieve but what I got from it was more feelings of guilt and shame about the burden I will be on the health-care system if I need an amputation. Needed that like a hole in the head.

Hehe
Mel – I Loved this post – I couldn’t agree more! And the bonus of coming up with a similarly even more inappropriate, pathetic campaign has me in stitches….One of my faves of all time is “The DA-NSW (now usurped by the recent campaign was around 1996 when Da came up with “are you an Apple or a Pear?” meaning if you are shaped like an apple (fat stomach) you are more at risk of developing “diabetes”! Not T1 or T2, just “diabetes! Let alone the idiotic metaphor of “an apple”????? I kid you not! This was the campaign in ’96. I was working for them then! And I quit shortly afterwards…..;)